Right now, Spain is the second best basketball nation in the world. They are the defending silver medalists from the Beijing Olympics, they have the second best professional league in the world. They remain the favorites at EuroBasket heading into the second round.

And they are producing some of the best players in the world — Pau and Marc Gasol, Ricky Rubio, Rudy Fernandez, Juan Carlos Navarro, Jose Calderon, and more.

It’s how they are producing them that is interesting. Dan Grunfeld — who was the leading scorer for Stanford a few years back, had a tryout with the Knicks and has played overseas — has had a first hand look at how Spain builds players. Which he wrote about at SB Nation in a post worth reading (those Stanford guys can write).

“If you’re looking at Spain’s success on the basketball court, you have to start with their player development. How they teach the game, starting at a very early age, is pretty remarkable. It’s definitely different than my experiences growing up, when I played a lot of games on travel teams, school teams and AAU teams, without much organized time devoted to my individual development as a player.

“In Spain, young players don’t just play basketball, they learn basketball. It starts with the coaches, who need to be certified by the Spanish Basketball Federation….

I used to see these Spanish youngsters, anywhere from 8-14 years old, working out in my team’s gym, especially if I’d go in at night to get treatment from our crotchety old Spanish trainer. Once in a while, if our trainer needed a smoke break, I’d peek my head into the gym to watch them for a bit, and I was always kind of amazed. There would regularly be a whole team of players working with one coach. Their drills were serious and disciplined, without yelling or screaming or anything like that. Instead, the coaches would instruct and the players would listen, working on things like footwork, ball handling and shooting with the proper mechanics.

“These kids were learning and practicing key basketball basics, but they were also being taught important social lessons about the game. Without even knowing it, they were learning how to take direction. They were following instructions. They were listening. They were trusting their coach and applying his advice.”

It’s been said before that the AAU and high school system here in the United States gives American players a lot of court time but not the base of fundamentals. The traveling teams do not become about true coaching too often, but about exploiting the best talent. There are exceptions, there certainly are high school coaches out there trying to do the right thing.

But it is time we as a nation had a conversation about how to structure our youth basketball programs so it becomes about what is best for the young athletes and not what is best for the adults that run them (and the colleges that make a lot of money on them).

In fact, in Saturday’s dunk contest, he didn’t look like a dunker at all.

The Pacers star missed all three attempts of his first dunk, and a Black Panther mask was by far the biggest draw of his second. Oladipo was eliminated after the first round.

Maybe Dennis Smith Jr. wasn’t the only eliminated dunker who left something in his bag. This Oladipo dunk – 180 degrees, throwing ball off the backboard with his left hand while in mid-air, dunking with his right hand – while preparing in Los Angeles was awesome.

A statement released Wednesday by the NFL and NBA clubs says their 90-year-old owner is resting comfortably at Ochsner Medical Center, a hospital which also serves as a major sponsor and which owns naming rights to the teams’ training headquarters.

Benson has owned the New Orleans Saints since 1985 and bought the New Orleans Pelicans in 2012.

In recent years, Benson has overhauled his estate plan so that his third wife, Gayle, would be first in line to inherit control of the two major professional franchises.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said he’d be surprised if Kawhi Leonard played again this season, a stark reversal from just a month ago. Back then, even while announcing Leonard was out indefinitely with a quad injury, the San Antonio coach said Leonard wouldn’t miss the rest of the season.

After spending 10 days before the All-Star break in New York consulting with a specialist to gather a second opinion on his right quad injury, All-NBA forward Kawhi Leonard bears the burden of determining when he’s prepared to play again, sources told ESPN.

Leonard has been medically cleared to return from the right quad tendinopathy injury, but since shutting down a nine-game return to the Spurs that ended Jan. 13, he has elected against returning to the active roster, sources said.

The uncertainty surrounding this season — and Leonard’s future which could include free agency in the summer of 2019 — has inspired a palpable stress around the organization, league sources said.

At first glance, this sounds like Derrick Rose five years ago. Even after he was cleared to play following a torn ACL, the then-Bulls star remained mysterious about when he’d suit up. His confidence in his physical abilities seemed to be a major issue, and he was never the same player since (suffering more leg injuries).

But the Spurs famously favor resting players to preserve long-term health. They seem unlikely to rush back Leonard. They might even sit players who want to play more often. And Leonard isn’t Rose.

Still, it’s clear something is amiss in San Antonio. Maybe not amiss enough to end Leonard’s tenure there, but the longer this lingers, the more time for tension to percolate.